Three Wishes

Part 1 – The Genie of the Slippers

George, the shoeshine man, was a well known figure at the central railway station. He didn’t have to shine shoes for a living. He chose to. At the age of 50 he had resigned from his top ranking, highly paid job as the CEO of a major finance company precisely in order to shine shoes simply because it was his lifetime’s ambition to do so.

Why? Because George was a submissive, heterosexual male who dreamt of nothing else but serving the feet and footwear of beautiful young women. We say ‘heterosexual’, but it’s a bit of a moot point – for whilst George was attracted to women he didn’t want to sleep with them. All he had ever wanted to do was to be their slave, their ‘footslave’ specifically, licking their pretty shoes and boots whilst they berated and verbally abused him. That was the only thing that turned George on.

And so, after years and years of frustration George had finally bitten the bullet and jacked in his high-powered job, which gained him nothing but the unwanted respect and admiration of women, in favour of a job where he could be the servant of women; where women could regard him as an ‘inferior’; where women could, quite literally, look down on him as he shined their pretty, feminine shoes and boots.

He had thought about other jobs – a salesman in a ladies’ shoe shop; a cobbler in a heel-bar; a chiropodist; a pedicurist; a reflexologist. But none of them seemed to have the same connotations of humility and submissiveness as the humble shoeshine man – shining the boots and shoes of passers-by in the street or at the railway station. And so he had purchased an ornate shoeshine stand, and paid for a pitch in a prime location at the busy railway station, so that he could live out his fantasy of shining women’s shoes.

Of course, it wasn’t a perfect set up. This was the real world – and there were several drawbacks to his new position in life. Firstly, he had to shine men’s shoes and boots as well – and George hated that. He had thought long and hard about where he could possibly pitch his shoeshine stall so that he would be shining the shoes exclusively of women – in the lobby entrance to the ladies’ restrooms perhaps? Or outside a ladies-only health club? But whenever he had approached the relevant authorities they had become suspicious and permission was denied. The railway station concourse was, therefore, the best he could do. Beggars can’t be choosers! And if that meant having to shine male shoes as well as female – tough! It was a price worth paying for the privilege and honour of shining superior women’s shoes as well.

Secondly he could only shine the superior female customers’ boots and shoes with polish, brushes and a cloth. He really wanted to lick them clean – to polish them with his ‘slave’ tongue. But bootlicking in public was a complete no-no, at least in the real world if not in George’s fantasy world. How he longed to feel the lash of a woman’s tongue as his own tongue licked away her shoe-dirt!

But the third major disadvantage of shining shoes in the real world was that his customers, especially his female customers, just weren’t verbally abusive to him. How he yearned for his female customers to truly despise him and hold him in contempt as he performed the humiliating and degrading task of humbly shining their superior, feminine shoes and boots! But, women being women, they were kind and compassionate creatures, and were just plain ‘nice’ to him as he serviced their pretty footwear. None of them spat on him as he worked; none of them barked their orders down at him in a haughty and commanding voice; none of them addressed him as ‘slave’ or ‘footslave’. George was perpetually disappointed by this, and frustrated that out of sheer good manners and customer service he had to engage in friendly and polite ‘small-talk’ with his female superiors as he shined their shoes. He wished he could address them as ‘mistress’, or even ‘goddess-mistress’, but instead could only just about get away with ‘Madam’ or ‘Miss’. For their part they just called him ‘George’.

And fourthly, perhaps the greatest frustration of all, he was confined to shining superior women’s dirty shoes and boots and was never required to take off their outer footwear in order to clean, or even to sniff or kiss, their inner footwear. George was just as keen on ladies’ socks and stockings, and indeed their pretty, soft, feminine, bare feet, as he was on feminine shoes and boots. How he ached to have a sniff of the pretty, white socks he could see so close up inside a lady’s black, leather, zip-up ankle boots. Oh to be allowed to pull down that zip with his mouth and humbly kiss the creases on the side of her dirty, white bootsock! But he couldn’t. Such things were not done in public – not in the real world.

His one consolation was that some women brought him several pairs of well-worn shoes and boots to ‘take away’ and clean at home – ready for collection the at a later date. And so George, in the privacy of his own home, was at least able to sniff and smell the insides of his female customers’ shoes – to lick them even; to taste the residual feminine footsweat that stained the inner linings of their pretty shoes and boots. He spent hours every night buffing up the ladies’ dirty shoes and boots in ways they could never have imagined! But the results spoke for themselves – George had quickly built up a reputation as a thoroughly good shoeshine-man who left a lady’s boots and shoes sparkling! He soon had a regular and loyal customer-base.

His shoeshine stand was, as we indicated before, ornate and opulent. It had cost him a small fortune at auction. The customer sat on a comfortable, leather-backed, high-chair with their feet resting on two, metal footrests at George’s eye-level. But this was his fifth, and final, major frustration – he had to shine shoes whilst standing up. George didn’t feel right standing up like a free human being whilst he shone shoes. He felt he should be on his hands and knees – kneeling humbly at the feet of the superior woman as she towered above him on her shoeshine-throne whilst he, her underling, polished her dirty, black leather ankle boots and admired the elasticated tops of her feminine, white, ankle socks.

So, despite all the lengths he had gone to realise his fantasies, life still had its frustrations for George, the onetime Chief Executive Officer of a major financial institution-cum-shoeshine man.

It also had its rewards, however, and one such reward was approaching his stand at that very moment!

It was one of his many female regulars, the exotic Arab lady whom he knew only as miss Basmah. He called her ‘miss’ not because of her marital status – he knew she was married to a man called Hatim – but because of her age. She was only 23 years old, and George liked to flatter his younger female customers, basically any woman under the age of about 35, by addressing them as ‘miss’ rather than ‘Madam’. None of them seemed to mind, and certainly not miss Basmah.

She was truly an exotic-looking young woman – superb figure; slim and svelte, quite petite in build, and with rich, dark, shoulder length hair and dark, brown Arabian eyes – eyes that spoke of the mysterious orient, even though she was quite ‘westernised’. Because of the small-talk he was obliged to engage in with his customers he knew that miss Basmah was Egyptian born, but had moved to Europe at the age of 18 to study medicine. She still spoke with a slight Egyptian accent, although her English was now word-perfect. She was a very intelligent young woman – the sort George would have happily employed in a managerial role in his company when he had been CEO.

Miss Basmah always wore western clothes, but often with a hint of the orient – he could see that today, for example, she was wearing lightweight, loose-fitting pink trousers that were elasticated just above her shapely brown ankles – the sort of ‘pantaloon’ style trousers he imagined an exotic, Egyptian belly-dancer might wear, and yet the rest of her outfit was quite ‘conventional’ – a short, blue denim jacket over a pink T shirt, and shiny, black, low-heeled court shoes on bare feet.

She smiled at George as she approached him, although her smile disappointed him, and he would have preferred her to be approaching him with a look of disdain on her pretty, Arabian face. George’s natural instincts meant that he had, of course, to smile back.

‘Good morning, George, how are you today?’ asked the young Egyptian woman in a happy, sing-song voice.

‘Good morning, miss Basmah! How lovely to see you again!’ replied George in as humble a tone as he felt he could get away with.

He was, genuinely, glad to see her. She always stopped to let him shine whatever shoes or boots she happened to be wearing – and she was a good tipper (not that George needed the money!) More significantly, George was delighted to see that miss Basmah had brought a carrier bag full of her dirty shoes and boots with her again, as she had done the week before. She must be going to leave them for me to take away and shine at my home for her, thought George, delighted by the realisation that once again he would get to smell the insides of the charming miss Basmah’s shoes!

She was continuing to chat to him as he gallantly took her delicate, right hand to help her climb up onto her seated position on the comfortable leather chair of the shoeshine stand:

‘I’m afraid I can’t stop long today, George, I’m on my way to attend an important lecture at the teaching hospital and my train leaves in 10 minutes…’

Good for you, miss Basmah – increasing your knowledge of important medical procedures whereas I am fit only to stay here all day and shine the shoes of my betters, thought George to himself.

‘… I do want to look my best, however, and I’m afraid I stepped in a muddy puddle on the way to the station. My right shoe in particular is now splattered in mud – can you see?’ continued miss Basmah, holding her right foot up in the air under George’s nose and dangling her shiny, low-heeled, black leather court shoe off the end of her toes so that he could better see the offending streak of wet mud along the lower side of her shoe.

George knew she was only shoving her dirty shoe in his face so that he could better see what needed cleaning. She was not, he presumed, dangling her shoe in front of him in order to turn him on. But that was the net effect, especially since the black, leather court shoe was so close to his face that he could smell it!

Miss Basmah giggled somewhat embarrassedly:

‘Ha! Ha! Do you think you could get all that muck off and give my shoes a nice shine, George?’ she asked him politely.

‘Of course, miss!’ responded George, almost offended at the implication that he might have some difficulty in cleaning up the young woman’s dirty court shoes!

Due to her newly seated position the elasticated bottoms of miss Basmah’s lightweight, pink trousers had risen even further up her shapely, brown-skinned, calf muscles thereby revealing even more of her equally shapely ankle bones – including the small tattoo of a crescent on her right, outer ankle bone. How George had come to admire that small, crescent-shaped tattoo on miss Basmah’s right ankle over the weeks and months he had been serving her. It spoke of mystery; of a certain rebelliousness perhaps; of hidden depths to her character. He ached to kiss her tattooed ankle bone. But ache was all he could do.

Miss Basmah’s right foot was now resting on the metal footrest in front of George’s face again ready for him to wipe off the mud with his shoeshine-cloth.

He began rubbing the cloth over the young woman’s shiny black shoe leather. Again, he couldn’t help thinking that his tongue could do a much better job removing the muddy stain, and the young Arab woman’s shoe-mud would have tasted so sweet to him. But licking the mud off a young woman’s shoe in the middle of a busy railway station in the rush-hour wasn’t the done thing.

Other commuters, men and women, were busy rushing by but George was oblivious to them all as he focused in on miss Basmah’s dirty, mud-stained right shoe. He now noticed that one or two specks of mud had even splashed onto her bare footflesh above the upper rim of the low-cut, court shoe. But he would have to ask the young woman’s permission to touch her bare foot-skin with his dirty cloth:

‘Miss Basmah, I see that you have some specks of mud on your bare foot. Would you like me to wipe them away also?’ asked George expectantly.

‘Oh, yes please, George!’ replied miss Basmah, bending down to inspect the damage herself with her big, brown eyes.

‘Very good, miss,’ replied George, his hand beginning to shake with excitement as he realised he was about to have the honour of touching miss Basmah’s bare footskin – albeit through a cloth. He was glad, for once, that she wasn’t wearing socks, for, much as he admired women’s socked feet, there was something especially intimate about wiping the dirt off a young woman’s soft, bare footflesh – especially the exotic, brown footflesh of a beautiful young Arab woman.

Once the mud stains had been removed from miss Basmah’s feet and shoes George began to shine the court shoes properly – applying black polish with his bare fingers and then rubbing the shoes vigorously with a clean cloth before buffing them up with a soft brush. George didn’t mind getting his fingers dirty in the service of women’s footwear.

As he diligently polished her shoes whilst she sat comfortably above him, miss Basmah clarified what was in her carrier bag:

‘I’ve brought some more of my dirty boots and shoes for you to clean at home again, George. You did such a good job on the last ones I left with you!...’

George’s heart leapt with pride. The young mistress had been satisfied with his previous shoe-cleaning work! His tongue had done a good job on her shoes and boots, and she was pleased with the results:

‘…You even managed to get the treads in the soles of my hiking boots clean! How on earth did you do it, George? They were truly filthy with totally ingrained mud!’

George remembered well miss Basmah’s thick, heavy, brown leather hiking boots, and he remembered the caked-on mud on the soles! He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to reply to his superior mistress as follows:

“Oh pray, mistress Basmah, if it pleases you, mistress Basmah, this dirty shoeshine-slave had the honour and privilege of using his inferior, slave tongue to extract the mud from each and every tread on the bottoms of your superior, brown leather, hiking boots, if it pleases you most beautiful and feminine superior mistress Basmah; and he then had the inestimable honour of swallowing every last morsel of your sweet, hiking-boot mud, after he had spent several hours sniffing the insides of your sweat-stained, brown leather hiking boots, if it so pleases you, supreme goddess-mistress Basmah.”

But, of course, he couldn’t tell her the truth, and instead had to lie:

‘Oh, I admit I had to use a special boot-scraper, miss Basmah.’

‘Ha! Ha! Well, I’m sorry that I had to give you such a messy pair of boots to clean but I must say you did a really good job. Even my husband Hatim was impressed with the results!’

George had never met Hatim, but he was glad to hear that his young mistress’s husband, his ‘master’, was satisfied with his efforts in cleaning his charming young wife’s dirty hiking boots!

‘You’ll be pleased to know that I don’t think any of these other shoes and boots are anything like as dirty, but they could still do with a nice shine!’ continued miss Basmah.

George was not pleased to hear that! He wanted truly dirty, well-worn, female shoes and boots to clean – he craved them. The smellier and dirtier the better!

George had nearly finished shining miss Basmah’s black, leather court shoes now, and he could hear her opening her purse:

‘Here you are, George. Thanks again! I really must go now. I’ll collect the other boots and shoes on Friday if that’s alright?’

‘Yes certainly, miss Basmah,’ responded George as he once again held out his arm to assist miss Basmah as she stepped down from the high chair of the shoeshine-stand – her black leather court shoes now gleaming and without any trace of mud left on them.

‘Okay. See you then, George!’ shouted miss Basmah as she ran off towards platform 3, leaving her carrier bag of dirty, but seemingly not too dirty, shoes and boots for George to take home and lick clean later that evening.

Be they dirty or not George couldn’t wait to get them home. He even ‘knocked off’ early – at about 7:00 PM (he normally worked from 06:00 AM until 09:00 PM – so much did he enjoy his new job!)

After a quick and rather unappetising microwaveable meal and a whole bottle of wine (George drank too much) he opened up the carrier bag to see exactly what delights miss Basmah had kindly supplied him for his dessert. There were 5 pairs of boots and shoes in all. He went straight for the ankle boots first – he always did, for George adored women’s ankle boots, especially leather, zip-up ankle boots like these ones. He adored them because they enclosed a woman’s foot enough to ensure that her feet couldn’t breathe and therefore quickly became hot and sweaty – which he liked – and yet they were also short enough to enable a shoeshine man to see down into them when a lady was seated on the shoeshine stand in front of him. He could therefore see what type of socks, if any, the superior ankle-boot-wearing mistress had on inside her boots - unlike say with knee-length or even calf-length boots, when it was often impossible to tell what inner footwear, if any, a lady was wearing.

And such details were important to a ‘footslave’ like George. For he needed to know whether a lady’s footsweat was going directly onto the inner lining of her boots, or whether it was being absorbed by her socks. How he wished there were such things as public sock-cleaners! He might well have set himself up as a ‘sock-cleaning man’ rather than a ‘shoeshine man’ if there were such a thing! He would be happy to mouth wash his female customers’ dirty socks, either whilst they were still wearing them, or if they wanted to leave them for him to clean at home, if such a service were considered socially acceptable! But, of course, it wasn’t – not in the real world – and so George never got to smell his female customers’ sweaty socks.

But he did get to smell the insides of their sweaty ankle boots, as he was doing now with miss Basmah’s stylish, pointy-toed, spike-heeled, brown leather, zip-up ankle boots. George held the right boot up to his nose and breathed in deeply. He breathed in miss Basmah’s stale foot sweat. Judging by the yellowy-brown stains on the light grey inner lining of the boot she may well have been wearing these particular boots without socks. The sweat appeared to have gone straight into the lining of the boots. He resolved that he would do his best to lick clean the insides of miss Basmah’s boots as well as the outsides, for her inner footsweat was every bit as precious to him as her outer boot-dirt.

In addition to the stylish, spiky-heeled, pointy-toed, brown leather ankle boots there were a pair of bright yellow Wellington boots with dirty, grey drawstrings at the top. George loved the smell of women’s Wellington boots, although he rarely got the opportunity to clean them – either on the shoeshine stand or at home. He held the top of one of the Wellingtons over his nose and took a deep breath. It was a delicious, heady smell that made him quite dizzy – the smell of the inside of a young woman’s sweaty Wellington boot mixed with the strong scent of rubber. Surely she must have worn thick, yellow bootsocks or thick, woolly, yellow tights inside these boots, he thought to himself? He would enjoy licking those boots later – he loved the bitter taste of a young woman’s soft, feminine, rubber, Wellington boot on his tongue mixed in with the detritus and mud from her garden (it was an acquired taste!)

Then there was the inevitable pair of sneakers – the mainstay of any ‘westernised’ young woman’s footwear. George had mixed feelings about girls’ sneakers. He liked the look and the smell of them, and he liked the way most young women wore them with very low-cut sneaker socks, the elasticated tops of which were often just visible inside the rim of the sneakers. He liked these low-cut ‘sneaker socks’ because it was almost as if they were meant to be a secret – a secret that only the mistress and her footslave knew about. After all – they weren’t for show. They were often specifically referred to as ‘secret socks’ or ‘no-show’ socks – their sole purpose, if you’ll forgive the pun, being to keep the young woman’s feet nice and comfortable inside her hot sneakers and to absorb her footsweat.

George recognised this particular pair of blue and white sneakers, and he knew for a fact that miss Basmah had worn them with short, plain white sneaker socks just last week, for he had attempted to clean the sneakers for her whilst she was wearing them seated on his shoeshine stand. And therein lay the reason for George’s mixed feelings about sneakers – they were notoriously hard to clean and, of course, impossible to ‘shine’. He always felt that the results of his labours on women’s sneakers left something to be desired – that the customer was being short-changed as it were, as the sneakers rarely seemed to show much sign of improvement however much cream he applied to them, or, in the case of sneakers left for him to clean at home, however hard he licked them. He had even ‘cheated’ once or twice and washed ladies’ sneakers in the washing machine, though it pained him to think that any ingrained dirt was being washed down his drain rather than down his throat!

Be that as it may, it wouldn’t stop him from trying to lick clean miss Basmah’s dirty, blue and white, well-worn sneakers. He would lick them inside and out, hard and long. He would suck the dirt out of her grey-white laces, and polish up the little, white plasticy bits at the end of her laces inside his mouth until they, at least, gleamed.

Then there was a pair of block-heeled, round-toed, black patent leather, mary-jane style shoes with a single strap across the tops. George loved strappy shoes – especially if worn with trousers or slacks, as the straps across the tops afforded a better view of the lady’s socks, tights or bare feet inside the shoes. Whenever he saw a strappy shoe on a lady’s foot he ached to kiss the area of her foot between the strap and the main body of the shoe – be it socked or bare. It was as if that area was just made for a ‘footslave’s’ mouth – bordered by the strap as a kind of designated area for him to kiss and worship.

He liked ladies’ strappy shoes also because of the challenge they presented to a shoeshine-slave – how to polish the shiny, black leather strap without smearing the polish on the pure, white, feminine sock or the soft, bare, feminine foot beneath it. It required care and attention – and he was pleased to know that he had never once smeared a lady’s nice, clean socks or bare footflesh with his black shoe polish.

Yes, George would enjoy paying homage to miss Basmah’s block-heeled, strappy, mary-jane style shoes with his slave tongue later that evening!

George was beginning to feel a bit squiffy (the effects of the wine, no doubt) as he extracted the final pair of shoes from miss Basmah’s carrier bag. They were most unusual – more slippers than shoes. Exotic, oriental-style, soft, silver-sparkly slippers; again, the sort of footwear George imagined an exotic, Arabian belly-dancer might wear.

The slippers caused George some momentary consternation. They were very nice – obviously quite well-worn, judging by the staining on the grey inner lining of the slippers were miss Basmah’s delicate, feminine footsweat had reacted with the coating of the lining. The inner lining was even beginning to show signs of rubbing away altogether on the insides of the heels. Yes, he would definitely enjoy sniffing and licking the inner lining of the slippers.

But how would he be able to clean the sparkly silver bits on the outside of the delicate slippers? He was slightly concerned that some of the silvery bits might come off in his mouth if he licked the outside of the slippers too hard. He also wondered what the outside of the slippers would taste like and would feel like on his tongue. Very different, he imagined, from the smooth, feminine boot and shoe leather that he was accustomed to licking.

He decided to try them out there and then. He ran his tongue carefully across the upper toe of the right slipper.

There was a sudden flash of light and a puff of smoke that momentarily stunned George and sent him reeling onto his back on his kitchen floor. As soon as the smoke cleared he saw a young Arabian woman standing over him, dressed in the style of the beloved, exotic belly-dancers of his dreams and fantasies, with a transparent, light blue veil over her pretty face that only seemed to accentuate the deep brown of her pretty, Arabian eyes:

‘I am Johara - the genie of the slippers,’ declared the young woman. ‘Whosoever shall lick these slippers shall have three wishes. Tell me your first wish, and so shall it be, oh mortal one!’

George was…well… stunned! The genie of the slippers?! He rubbed his eyes.

No, the young woman was still standing dominantly over him, hands on hips, the silver, sparkly slippers now on her feet. His initial thought was, I wish I could kiss your feet, exotic genie-mistress Johara!

But he thought again! ‘Whosoever shall lick these slippers shall have three wishes!’ – that was what she had said. George knew exactly what his first wish should be. After all, he had been wishing for it all his adult life:

‘Erm… Mistress-genie Johara, if it pleases you mistress-genie Johara, I wish that I could serve as a public footslave to women in a society where enslavement of the submissive male by the female is the norm, and where public footslaves are taken for granted and held in contempt by the haughty, superior women whom they humbly serve.’

Mistress-genie Johara smiled wryly:

‘Very well, mortal male. This is your first wish. As you wish so shall it be! You may summon me by licking my slippers again when you are ready to make your second wish!’

And with that she gave a contemptuous wave of her pretty hand, there was another flash, another puff of smoke, and George suddenly found himself transported back to his pitch in the railway station.

Only there were differences:

• It was daytime again, the morning rush hour by all accounts
• He was dressed in a plain, brown, short, slave tunic and had a rough, metal slave-collar around his neck
• He was attached to the shoeshine stand in front of him by means of a thick, metal chain
• On the right hand side of the shoeshine stand there hung what looked like a brown, whippy, riding crop
• He was positioned humbly on his knees, but his face was nevertheless level with the two metal footrests

It really was a dream come true – just the way he would have wished it!

Suddenly a pair of black, feminine, pointy-toed, spike-heeled, zip-up ankle boots were positioning themselves in front of his kneeling face. The booted feet appeared to belong to a young, blonde, pony-tailed businesswoman in her mid-to-late twenties. He could tell she was a businesswoman by the pin-striped jacket and trousers she was wearing - trousers which she pulled up slightly as she now made herself comfortable in the seat above him thereby revealing the elasticated tops of her smart, black, ankle-length bootsocks inside her boots:

‘Shine them up, slave!’ barked the young woman down at him.

Slave! She had called him slave! At last, after all these years his dream had finally come true. He was a woman’s slave – her shoeshine-slave; her footslave! And he noticed that he had no cloths, brushes or shoe polish to hand. That could only mean one thing! He had to shine her boots by means of his slave tongue!

‘Get a move on, slave, I haven’t got all day!’ snapped the young, smartly dressed businesswoman down at him as she took a newspaper out of her black briefcase and began to read the financial pages.

George – slave George – couldn’t believe his good fortune! He was a true boot-licking slave at last!

‘Yes mistress, at once mistress!’ he fawned as he lowered his lips to touch the dirty, scuff-marked, pointy toe of the arrogant and impatient young businesswoman’s stiletto-heeled, right ankle boot.




Part 2 – The Public Shoeshine Slave

George the regular shoeshine man was not unfamiliar with the taste of young women’s bootleather. He had, after all, been licking their boots in the privacy of his own home for some time now. But to be able to lick a superior, young, twenty-something, blonde, pony-tailed businesswoman’s black, leather, zip-up ankle boots in public in his new capacity as a women’s public shoeshine-slave – that really was a dream come true!

The leather boots somehow tasted all the sweeter due to the fact that she was still wearing them as he licked them; his sense of humility and inferiority was all the greater; and the fact that the young woman was haughtily ignoring him and pouring over the financial pages of her newspaper whilst he humbly licked the filth off her boots somehow made his feeling of degradation all the more complete – he, George, the former CEO of a major financial institution was now nothing more than a young woman’s public bootlicker, fit only to taste where she had been walking.

He began to speculate about the exact profession of the pin-stripe-trousered young mistress whose boot-dirt was currently swilling around inside his mouth. He guessed she worked in the stock exchange – probably a fairly junior financial trader, given her age. But so accustomed was he now to engaging in small-talk with his customers, he decided the polite thing to do would be to simply ask the young woman where she worked. She might, after all, be interested to know that he used to be a big-shot in the financial world himself. She might find that curious and interesting.

Slave George therefore decided to break the rather embarrassing silence which was being disturbed only by the background bustle of the busy railway station, the rustling of the young, blonde woman’s newspaper, and the slapping sound of George’s bootlicking tongue:

‘Do you work in the City, miss?’ he politely enquired in between bootlicks.

The next thing he was aware of was the young businesswoman setting aside her paper, unhooking the riding crop that hung to the right of the shoeshine stand, and a flash of searing pain suddenly coursing down across his right shoulder.

She had hit him with the whip!

‘How dare you, slave! How dare you speak to your superior mistress without being spoken to! Just who do you think you are? Do you think you’re my equal or something? Do you think a free woman like me would be interested in having a conversation with a down-in-the-dirt bootslave like you?!’ exclaimed the young woman incredulously.

She whipped him hard across the shoulders again.

Slave George bit his lip. The pain was significant, and the flimsy, plain, brown slave tunic that covered his back wasn’t affording him much protection from the sting of the whip.

How stupid could he have been! He had forgotten his place already! He was no longer George the shoeshine man; he was now just a public footslave. How dare he seek to engage one of his superior, female customers in polite conversation!

‘Oh pray, mistress, please don’t beat me, mistress. I beg your forgiveness, sweet feminine young mistress!’ he implored.

Thankfully, the pony-tailed, sweet feminine young mistress put the whip back onto its hook. But she clearly hadn’t ceased being offended:

‘I think you need to learn some slave manners, bootboy! What, is the dirt on my boots not interesting enough for you, or something? Are you so high and mighty that you need to concentrate your slave mind on something else?’

Slave George blushed with embarrassment. Here he was with a unique opportunity to live out his deepest fantasies and dreams, and yet he was blowing it! Of course the dirt on the young woman’s boots was all that interested him, and all that should interest him! There was no need for polite small-talk any more – he was a shoeshine slave, not a man; his tongue was for licking young women’s dirty boots and shoes, not for chatting them up!

He must make amends:

‘Oh pray, mistress, if it pleases you mistress, please forgive this stupid, ignorant slave for his indiscretion. This slave is truly honoured to taste the superior dirt on his beautiful young mistress’s boots, if it pleases you mistress.’

‘Then shut up and lick, slave!’ barked the young woman exasperatedly, ‘Lick the upper parts of my ankle boots. Shine them with your dirty, slave tongue and make sure your ugly, slave nose doesn’t brush against the tops of my socks!’

‘Yes mistress. At once mistress’

Slave George realised this particular polite conversation was over. The superior young woman didn’t want to hear him talk – she wanted to hear him lick. And so that’s just what he did – he licked the tops of her boots taking great care not to brush his ugly, slave nose against the elasticated tops of her black, ankle socks, or even worse against the smooth, bare flesh of her leg above the tops of her socks!

As he did so, it occurred to George that not all his dreams and wishes were going to come true in this new situation in which he found himself, for he would, if truth be told, have loved to brush his nose against the tops of her socks – to sniff her socks; to kiss them respectfully as they were the bootsocks of a superior young, blonde, pony-tailed, be-suited businesswoman. Clearly his wish to be a slave overruled any subordinate wishes he may have – and quite rightly so! A slave should not have any say in which items of his mistress’s footwear he is permitted to worship at any given time!

Fortunately for slave George the tension was eased when the young woman’s cell phone rang. George heard a man’s muffled voice on the other end of the phone and surmised from the snippets he heard of the young woman’s part of the conversation that it must be her boyfriend or husband:

‘Hi, honey!...No, I’m still at the station…I’m just having my boots shined by the public footslave…Yeah….Yeah…Ha! Ha!...Nah, he’s an ugly old dork, and stupid with it...Ha! Ha!...Yeah!...What?...Sure, yeah, what time?...Are Angie and Philip coming too?...Okay, should be great…Where do you want to meet up?...Yeah I know it…Cool….OK, honey, see you there!... Love you!... Bye!’

All the while the telephone conversation was going on slave George was trying his utmost to concentrate on tongue-shining the uppers of the young woman’s boots whilst taking care not to touch her socks, just as she had commanded. Subconsciously, though, he was making mental notes about this strange new world of his dreams. He surmised, for example, from the overheard conversation, that some men must be free in this world – equals with women. That somehow made his own position all the more humiliating – which, after all, was what he wanted. It wasn’t men per se that this arrogant, young, junior female financial trader despised – it was just him, for he was in her pretty eyes nothing more than a ‘down-in-the-dirt bootslave’.

And so whilst the young woman sorted out her busy social life, slave George made himself busy sorting out her boots, bringing them up to a nice shine with his slave saliva, his only reward being the furtive view of the elasticated tops of her black bootsocks.

When he had tongue-shined her boots to her satisfaction, the young woman stepped down, unaided, from the high chair of the shoeshine stand and simply walked off. No words of thanks; no tip – just as George had always wanted.

He savoured the taste of the young businesswoman’s boots in his mouth for a few minutes until the arrival of his next customer.

Or rather – customers. For their arrival was heralded by girlish giggling and laughter. They were two young women in their twenties – tourists, backpackers; from Australia, judging by their accents. One was a black girl, dressed in very short beige shorts, black, calf-length, lace-up, Doc Marten style boots, and bright red, calf-length socks which were scrunched up on her bare, black legs above the boots. The socks would probably have reached her knees if she had been inclined to pull them up straight.

The other young woman was white, and was wearing light blue, denim jeans with turn-ups at the bottom containing a fetching pink stripe down the sides, and white, or rather dirty-grey, somewhat ‘flaky’, well-worn sneakers. From his kneeling position George couldn’t see what the two superior young women were wearing on their upper bodies. He was learning to keep his head, and his gaze, suitably low, and to concentrate on his customers’ feet and footwear – as befits a humble, public footslave. He only knew the second young woman was white because he caught a glimpse of her hands.

The two young out-of-towners were evidently talking about whether or not to avail themselves of his services. It sounded as though they were as unfamiliar with the situation of public slavery as George was:

‘Go on, Sheila…’ the young black woman in the Doc Marten boots and thick, red, scrunched-up bootsocks was saying. ‘…Your sneakers are truly filthy and need a good clean!’

Her companion, the young white woman Sheila – mistress Sheila to slave George – was laughing:

‘Ha! Ha! And what about your dirty, stinky socks, Chanelle? Are you gonna make him take off your boots and wash them in his mouth?’

‘Ha! Ha! No – but I will make him sniff them if you make him lick the dirt off your sneakers first! Deal?’

‘Deal!’

Mistresses Sheila and Chanelle appeared to have reached an accommodation – an accommodation in which slave George would have no say even though he would be a major player: he would, it seemed, be required to first lick clean the dirty, flaky, white sneakers of the white girl, mistress Sheila, and then sniff the sweaty, red socks of the black girl, mistress Chanelle.

But how would these two apparently inexperienced, out-of-town mistresses cope with the equally inexperienced slave?

Admirably, it seemed. Mistress Sheila took off her backpack and climbed up first into the high chair of the shoeshine stand as per the girls’ agreement. When she rested her feet on the two metal footrests in front of slave George’s kneeling face the turned-up, pink and blue hems of her denim jeans rode up further to reveal a delightful pair of short, white sneaker socks with a tiny coloured logo on the elasticated tops. Slave George immediately noticed that the sock on the left foot had slipped further down inside the back of the young woman’s sneaker than the sock on her right foot. Therefore he could see more of her pale, white, ankle flesh and pink heel on her left foot. Such a tiny, insignificant detail excited him, for it held out the prospect that the young woman might order him to pull her left sock up. He might get to touch her precious, white feminine sock whilst she was still wearing it! It would be a wonderful preamble to the certainty of having to sniff mistress Chanelle’s sweaty, red bootsocks!

But first there was the small matter of having to do what mistress Sheila herself wanted done:

‘Slave, clean my sneakers. Lick away all the grime and filth!’ she barked down at him in her antipodean accent, in between chewing on some gum.

‘Ha! Ha! Way to go, Sheila!’ exclaimed her delighted friend (it had been Chanelle’s initiative to kill some time by tormenting the public footslave. The girls had over an hour to wait for their train, and not enough money for a coffee. The services of the public footslave were, however, completely free!)

‘Yes mistress. At once mistress,’ responded slave George, his back still stinging from the attentions of his previous pony-tailed customer.

Speaking of which, slave George was immediately struck by the contrast between the smart, if dirty, black, pointy-toed, spike-heeled ankle boots of his previous customer - the young businesswoman - and the scruffy, tatty, well-worn grey-white sneakers of his current customer - the young Australian backpacker. Her white socks looked clean – or at least the elasticated tops did for they were all that was visible – but that only served to highlight how dirty and ‘off-white’ the sneakers were. As he lowered his lips to the flaky toe of mistress Sheila’s right sneaker slave George was sure he could smell the delicate aroma of sweet, feminine footsweat – sweat that had seeped into the very fabric of the sneakers over the many years of wear and tear.

He was sure he could taste it as well as he began to run his tongue along the part of the round-toed sneaker that covered the tops of the young woman’s toes. The sneaker tasted of rubbery salt!

‘Eww…gross!’ exclaimed the female owner of the sneakers.

‘Ha! Ha! Don’t worry, Sheila, I expect he’s used to it! He has probably grown to like the taste of women’s sweaty sneakers over the years. Isn’t that right slave?’ enquired mistress Sheila’s friend, mistress Chanelle, who was standing just to the left of the shoeshine stand so that she could get a good look at slave George’s humiliation at her friend’s feet.

Slave George had to admit that he had acquired a taste for young women’s sneakers since he had taken up his job as a shoeshine man, and, as with the young businesswoman’s boots, the feminine footwear tasted all the better for still being worn by the mistress whilst he was licking it:

‘Yes mistress,’ was all he could say. He resumed licking.

Miss Chanelle clearly wasn’t satisfied with his answer:

‘Well go on then, slave, tell my friend Sheila how much you are enjoying licking her dirty, sweaty sneakers. Tell her what an honour and privilege it is for you!’

Slave George clearly still had a lot to learn about when a mistress wants a slave to speak and what she wants him to say. He stopped licking momentarily:

‘Oh pray, mistress Sheila, if it pleases you mistress Sheila, this dirty footslave is truly honoured to taste your dirty sneakers and humbly enjoys the taste of your sneaker-sweat, if it so pleases you, most beautiful and superior mistress.’

Both girls creased up laughing. In fact, mistress Sheila was laughing so much that she couldn’t keep her feet still and slave George was accidentally kicked in the nose by her right sneakered foot as it swung uncontrollably in the air. Not that mistress Sheila felt any compulsion to apologise to the footslave – it was his own stupid fault if his ugly, slave face got in the way of her dirty sneaker!

Slave George never did get to straighten mistress Sheila’s left sneaker-sock, for her friend Chanelle was impatient to have him remove her Doc Marten boots and sniff her sweaty, red bootsocks – and both girls had known all along that Sheila’s sneakers were never going to be cleaned up by a slave’s tongue alone! They were beyond repair, and Sheila would have to simply buy a new pair as soon as she could save up enough money to be able to afford them!

The dirty, white-sneakered feet of mistress Sheila were, therefore, soon replaced by the black leather booted feet of mistress Chanelle on the two metal footrests in front of public footslave George’s now throbbing nose.

Unlike mistress Sheila’s dirty, white sneakers, mistress Chanelle’s black, lace-up, calf-length, Doc Marten style boots were actually quite new. The boots themselves were also quite clean – for a young female-backpacker’s boots. It was her socks that let down mistress Chanelle’s footwear hygiene – for she had been wearing the same pair of thick, red bootsocks for three days now as she didn’t have any clean socks to replace them with. In fact, the smell emanating from her now discarded backpack suggested a number of items of feminine underwear that needed a good wash.

Slave George wondered, as he began to unlace her boots, whether mistress Chanelle, who appeared to be the more dominant of the two girls, might actually make him suck clean all her dirty underwear from inside her smelly rucksack – her dirty pants and socks!

His mind, however, was soon focused on the job in hand as mistress Chanelle’s first boot came off. The stink was, quite simply, overwhelming and most unfeminine! The cheesy, vinegary stench of truly rancid socks!

Even miss Chanelle herself noticed it, as she pinched her nose with her fingers:

‘Strewth! Those bitches really do stink!’ she exclaimed.

Slave George, whilst he would not himself have been so disrespectful as to describe the young woman’s superior socks as ‘bitches’ (for he regarded all young women’s socks as his betters), nevertheless had to agree that they did reek! Unfortunately for George, however, he was not permitted to pinch his nose. Indeed, miss Chanelle’s next order made it clear he was to do his utmost to sniff in the cheesy aroma of her three-day-old bootsocks:

‘Slave, sniff up all my sock-stink. Get your nose deep inside the folds of my socks over the area of my sweaty toes and audibly sniff!’ she commanded, still holding her own nose thereby causing her antipodean voice to sound very nasal.

Mistress Sheila, meanwhile, was exaggerating the smell of her friend Chanelle’s socks by moving several yards away from the shoeshine stand:

‘Oh my God, Chanelle, how can you do that to him? I wouldn’t wish those socks on anybody! Ha! Ha!’ she laughed.

Slave George, however, had, indirectly, wished for it – for he had made a wish to be a women’s public footslave, and his wish had come true. Smelly socks came with the territory! And so, as directed by miss Chanelle, he audibly sniffed.

She made him sniff her thick, red bootsocks for a full five minutes – almost as if she thought that by vacuuming up her sock-stink into his slave nose the smell of the sweaty socks would go away. But, of course, it didn’t and, having humbly and self-deprecatingly sniffed the young black woman’s sweaty, red bootsocks, slave George then had the equally humiliating task of lacing the young woman’s Doc Marten style boots back onto her sweaty socked feet. His work had been nugatory – other, perhaps, than achieving his humiliation and entertaining his two young, twenty-something, back-packing, antipodean tormentresses.

They soon bored with him and moved off.

It all went downhill thereafter. Several hours, and dozens of female customers’, later George - the middle-aged former CEO and shoeshine man, now the young women’s public boot-licker, sneaker-licker, and sock-sniffer - was finding the reality of his fantasy life as a women’s public footslave difficult to endure. His knees ached. Even though it had previously been his dream to live life on his knees, he now actually found himself wishing he could stretch his legs for a bit – perhaps have a fifteen minute coffee break, like he used to do as a shoeshine man. But a slave, a real 24/7 slave, secured by a heavy chain in a kneeling position to the shoeshine stand, doesn’t have that option.

Furthermore, his shoulders ached, not just from his permanently crouched position kneeling in front of the shoeshine stand, but from the frequent blows of the riding crop from many seemingly ‘dissatisfied’, and probably unsatisfiable, arrogant young female customers. It began to feel like everything he did to clean their shoes, from licking off foul-tasting, ingrained dirt to removing chewing gum from the dirty treads of their scruffy sneakers or boots, just wasn’t good enough for them. He received no words of praise – just a constant barrage of criticism. One or two young women even slapped him across the face, or spat on him. To his surprise, the constant verbal and physical abuse was actually getting him down!

Above all, he was disillusioned by the fact that he had absolutely no say over which women’s shoes and boots he had to lick clean, or which women’s dirty socks and sweaty, bare feet he had to suck and sniff. Being a shoeshine man had had its drawbacks in that regard too – a shoeshine man can’t pick and choose his customers either. But at least the worst he had to do then was shine the shoes of some unattractive person with a cloth. Now, as a public footslave, even though he at least wasn’t having to clean the feet or footwear of male customers, he was nevertheless, in amongst servicing the feet and footwear of the occasional attractive young woman, having to suck the dirty, deeply unattractive, fat toes of grossly overweight, middle-aged women, and to feign respect for them whilst doing so. Some of the unkempt feet and footwear he was having to service with his slave mouth and tongue were, quite frankly, making him feel sick. Oh why hadn’t he specified to mistress-genie Johara that he should be the public footslave of attractive young women only!

If truth be told even if he had made such a wish, slave George was already fed up with his new fantasy life. Reality never seemed to live up to fantasy!

George therefore, somewhat to his own surprise, after just a few hours of being a proper, public footslave for women, wanted out! But there was no sign of mistress-genie Johara’s sparkly-silver slippers, so, worryingly, he wasn’t currently in a position to wish for anything! He began to wonder how and when he would be able to find the silvery slippers again and wish his life back to normal. A horrible thought occurred to him. What if genie-mistress Johara has deceived me? What if I was only ever going to be able to make one wish? What if I will be stuck as a public footslave for the rest of my life? Do I really want that?

No!

Somebody, it seems, however, was looking over slave George, for whilst he was pondering these questions who should approach his shoeshine stand but the exotic miss Basmah – the real owner of the silver slippers. And, what was more, she had the same carrier-bag full of her shoes and boots that she had had with her the previous day – including the silvery slippers. Indeed, she was dressed in the same clothes too – the blue denim jacket, the pink top, the matching pink, eastern-style, pantaloon-type, lightweight trousers that tapered in at the ankles, and, of course, the pretty, low-heeled, shiny black, court shoes on her shapely, brown ankles.

It was like some kind of time warp – a repetition of their encounter yesterday morning, only this time her tone of voice reminded George that he was no longer the friendly, neighbourhood shoeshine-man; he was the public shoeshine-slave:

‘Clean the muck off my shoes, slave’ miss Basmah barked down at him as she climbed up unaided into the high seat of the shoeshine stand.

Slave George had never heard miss Basmah speak in such an aggressive tone before. But then, he had never been her slave before. As she rested her feet on the metal footrests in front of his face he noticed something else that caused him some consternation. The small tattoo of a crescent that had been on her right ankle now appeared to be on her left ankle! ‘Oh my God!’ he thought to himself. ‘I’m in some sort of parallel universe! This is miss Basmah – but not as I know her. She is a doppelganger! Where exactly am I?'

‘Didn’t you hear what I said, slave? Clean the filthy muck off my shoes. Do it this instant!’

Miss Basmah’s piercing voice brought him back to his senses - you know where you are – you’re the public footslave in the main railway station, and your mistress Basmah wants her dirty shoes licked clean! So do it!

‘Yes mistress Basmah. At once mistress Basmah!’ he cringed; and he began licking away with his slave tongue the very same dirt that yesterday he had wiped away with his shoeshine-man’s cloth.

Mistress Basmah didn’t seem to bat an eyelid at his use of her name. So she must be a regular customer of George the footslave, just as miss Basmah is a regular customer of George the shoeshine-man in my own universe, thought slave George to himself.

He couldn’t quite get his slave head around all of this, but then, he didn’t have to. All he had to do was lick the muck off the side of miss Basmah’s left shoe (unlike yesterday it was her left shoe that was the most splattered with mud, not her right one).

Also as yesterday, slave George noticed that mistress Basmah’s left foot had some specks of wet mud on it. What should he do? Should he offer to lick it off – or, rather, beg permission to lick it off? Is a slave permitted to speak to his mistress without first being spoken to?

Slave George wasn’t sure. He only knew that he had to do something. He braced himself for a possible further encounter with the riding crop:

‘Oh pray, mistress Basmah, if you would be so kind, mistress Basmah, this dirty slave begs his superior mistress for forgiveness, but humbly beseeches his mistress’s permission to lick some specks of mud off his superior mistress’s divine foot, if it so pleases you, most gracious and merciful, feminine mistress.’

Mistress Basmah appeared to click her teeth in some annoyance:

‘Tch! Very well, slave – just get on with it!’

Slave George’s gamble had paid off! He was learning how to talk and act like a humble slave:

‘Yes mistress. Thank you mistress.’

He gently tongued the dirt off the side of mistress Basmah’s soft, brown foot, and swallowed it. It tasted like manna from heaven!

Indeed it was, pathetically, the highlight of his day so far – licking clean his Arab mistress’s bare foot – and slave George found himself suddenly wishing he could be her personal footslave. Her next words, as she stepped down from the shoeshine-stand, her feet and shoes now gleaming thanks to slave George’s tongue, reminded him that he had the opportunity to be just that:

‘Slave, I’ve brought some more of my shoes and boots for you to clean. Have them ready for me by Friday!’

‘Yes mistress Basmah. As you wish, mistress Basmah. Your wish is my command!’

For all his humility and self-deprecation George had not lost his sense of humour. ‘Your wish is my command’ – that was what genies normally said, wasn’t it? (although genie-mistress Johara had not struck him as the kind of genie who treated men’s pathetic wishes as her commands. She presumably fulfilled their wishes out of choice and the kindness of her female heart. Like so many women, she indulged men’s fantasies!)

Whatever, George’s mood had vastly improved again. Lust and fantasy had once more triumphed over common sense, and George now decided that he wished not to return to his old life as a shoeshine man after all, but to be mistress Basmah’s personal slave. That would be his second wish, and he now had the sparkly-silver slippers to be able to summon genie-mistress Johara and make his second wish come true. They were in the carrier bag mistress Basmah had just left him, along with the other pairs of boots and shoes she had left in the carrier bag in the parallel universe the day before – the brown leather, zip-up, pointy-toed and spike-heeled ankle boots; the bright yellow Wellington boots with the dirty, grey-white drawstrings; the blue and white sneakers; and the shiny, black, block-heeled, strappy mary-janes.

He crawled over to the bag on his knees as far as his slave-chain would allow and took out the soft, silvery slippers. He hesitated for just a few minutes before licking them. ‘Do I really want to remain a real-life slave – to be the personal footslave of mistress Basmah?’ he thought to himself. ‘Yes, I do,’ he concluded, ‘and if I don’t like it I can still use my third and final wish to wish myself back as a normal shoeshine-man again!’

It was a logic of sorts. He therefore picked up the slippers and licked them.

There was another sudden puff of smoke and genie-mistress Johara appeared in front of him – once again in her ‘belly-dancer’ outfit, with the transparent, blue veil covering the lower half of her pretty face, and with the silvery slippers somehow magically transferred onto her pretty feet:

‘Why have you summoned Johara again so soon, oh mortal one? Are you already desirous of making your second wish?’ asked the exotic mistress-genie in a somewhat incredulous tone.

‘Yes please, most beautiful and kind genie-mistress Johara. I …I now wish to be the personal footslave of mistress Basmah!’

Once again, genie-mistress Johara appeared to sneer at George’s pathetic request. Indeed, this time she even seemed to query it:

‘Are you sure, pathetic mortal? You should have learnt by now that you must be careful what you wish for! As you have discovered, fantasy can sometimes be better than reality!’

For all his innate submissiveness George was somewhat taken aback at genie-mistress Johara’s questioning of his desires. I mean, she was quite a scary genie – clearly superior to him as a mere, male mortal. More of a ‘goddess’ than a genie. But it was his wish and, as far as he knew, she had to fulfil it. So it was with an air of entirely inappropriate and uncalled for impatience that slave George repeated his request:

‘Yes, genie-mistress Johara, I think I’m old enough to know my own mind!’

A flash of excruciating pain suddenly traversed the entire length of George’s feeble, middle-aged body like a bolt of electricity. It snapped his heavy, metal slave chain and forced him to lie contritely on his belly at genie-mistress Johara’s silver-slippered feet. She truly seemed to tower over him now like an Arabian goddess:

‘Insolent fool!’ she declared. ‘I shall grant you your second wish, and may your back feel the sting of a thousand whips!’

Genie-mistress Johara then waved her hand contemptuously and the next thing George knew he was kneeling at the end of a couch on which mistress Basmah was reclining, massaging her bare, brown feet with his slave hands.

He was alone with mistress Basmah in what must be her living room! He was her personal footslave! His second wish had come true!

Thank you, goddess-mistress genie Johara! Thank you!




Part 3 – Miss Basmah’s Personal Footslave

After just a few minutes of massaging mistress Basmah’s bare feet slave George had already decided that being a personal footslave was much better than being a public footslave. Sure he was still wearing the same old plain slave tunic, and he was still down on his increasingly sore knees, but this was a much more pleasurable and intimate experience than being a public footslave in the busy railway station. He was, at least, kneeling on soft carpet at the end of mistress Basmah’s couch in the privacy of her living room and rubbing her beautiful, soft Arabian feet with their beautifully painted and varnished, bright red toenails with his bare hands and fingers, whilst she reclined, haughtily ignoring him, and concentrating instead on reading her glossy magazine.

He could also smell her glass of red wine, and his one regret was that he couldn’t join her in a glass, for George, as we already know, loved his wine! Personal footslaves, however, presumably weren’t allowed to join their mistresses in a glass of wine! They had work to do – gently rubbing and massaging their mistresses’ bare feet.

Mistress Basmah was now wearing a black T shirt and matching, black ski pants that hugged her shapely Arabian legs all the way down to her shapely, bare ankles. Slave George admired the crescent tattoo on her left, outer ankle bone again – it reminded him that this was the mistress Basmah of the ‘parallel universe’; the universe in which male slavery was the norm.

However, the sound of the living room door opening, and a male voice, reminded him of another feature of this strange, new world – that not all men were slaves:

‘Hi, darling!’

George’s heart sank. He had forgotten that he would not be the only man in mistress Basmah’s life! She was married! This must be her husband, Hatim – ‘master Hatim’ to slave George.

‘Oh hi, sweetheart!...’ replied mistress Basmah, rather unceremoniously withdrawing her bare feet from slave George’s hands as she swung her pretty, ski-pant clad legs off the end of the sofa in order to stand up and embrace her beloved husband.

‘…How was your day?’ continued mistress Basmah in an affectionate tone that reminded slave George of the other miss Basmah he knew from his own universe, as opposed to the ‘stroppy’ mistress Basmah who had barked her orders down at him when he had been serving her not long ago as a public footslave.

‘Oh, not too bad, honey – a bit knackering, though!’ replied master Hatim.

George was already beginning to feel jealous at the loving care and attention his mistress Basmah was showing towards her husband. How arrogant can a mere footslave be!

If truth be told, personal footslave George wasn’t sure what he should be doing, or quite where to look, as the superior mistress and master embraced in a passionate kiss above him. He decided that the correct thing for a young Arab lady’s white, middle-aged, personal footslave to do in such circumstances was to humbly kneel with his face behind his mistress’s bare heels as the light, brown, Arabian skin on the back of her heels wrinkled and folded as a result of her raising herself up on tiptoe to kiss her beloved Arabian husband on the mouth. How he wished he could kiss the backs of mistress Basmah’s heels as she kissed his master - her husband - on the lips! But George had the good sense to know that a footslave never kisses his mistress’s feet without her explicit permission.

‘Well, never mind, sweetheart…we’ll go out and see that movie tonight and I’ll treat you to a nice slap-up meal!’ continued miss Basmah.

She’ll treat him! Very modern, thought George to himself. Why was it that none of the women he ever met paid to take him out! Then he remembered that he wouldn’t be going out on dates with women any more. He was a full-time slave – the personal footslave of mistress Basmah!

‘Great! I’ll just go and freshen up!’ responded master Hatim, who still hadn’t even acknowledged slave George’s presence. Is it because in this strange new parallel universe I am literally invisible to him, wondered George momentarily.

No George, it’s just because you’re a mere slave! Why would a superior, free man bother to acknowledge the presence of his wife’s personal footslave? You’re just a thing; an object; an appendage to his beloved wife’s feet! You are no threat to him, and of no interest to him. Get over yourself!

Whilst superior master Hatim went to freshen up, mistress Basmah, her tone suddenly reverting to one suitable for addressing a personal footslave, barked an order down at the slave lying on his somewhat podgy, slave-tunic-covered belly behind her soft, but wrinkly, brown-skinned heels:

‘Slave, fetch my black ballet-flats!’

It was a simple enough order. Mistress Basmah was getting ready to go out to the cinema with her husband and she wanted her personal footslave to fetch her soft, black ballet-flats to match her black top and ski-pants, and to presumably then put them on her delicious, bare, brown feet. But where did she keep her shoes? Where was her shoe cupboard?

George didn’t know – yet she clearly expected him to know!

He began to panic and, as always, panic manifested itself in hesitation – a fatal error for a slave:

‘Slave! Did you hear me? Fetch my black ballet-flats this instant!’ mistress Basmah was now screaming at him!

Her raised voice attracted the attentions of her husband who re-entered the room:

‘What’s the matter, honey?’

‘Honestly, Hatim, this slave just gets more and more disobedient by the day! I’ve just ordered him twice to fetch my black ballet-flats and he still hasn’t moved! He really is nothing but a lazy, good-for-nothing, insolent, disobedient wretch!’, and with that miss Basmah scrunched up the toes on her petite and delicate, feminine, right foot and kicked slave George in the face with her red-painted toenails.

Master Hatim did his best to calm his irate wife down:

‘There, there honey! Calm down, you’ll only hurt yourself! Leave him to me. You go and get your shoes while I discipline him!’

‘Thank you sweetheart,’ responded mistress Basmah in a much more conciliatory tone. ‘Don’t spare him!’

As she left the room slave George wondered what she meant. ‘Don’t spare him!’ What exactly was master Hatim going to do to him? He didn’t much like the idea of being ‘disciplined’ by a man!

He felt scared and vulnerable.

He felt terrified as he became aware that master Hatim now had a cruel-looking whip in his hands – a three-thonged, brown leather whip with nasty-looking knots at the end of each thong:

‘So you think you’re too good to go and fetch my wife’s shoes, do you slave-boy? Well, let’s see if the whip can’t instil a sense of humility and obedience in you! Take off your tunic!’

George couldn’t believe this was happening! Where was genie-mistress Johara when he needed her? This wasn’t meant to be part of his fantasy – being whipped by a man!

It probably isn’t part of your fantasy either, so we’ll gloss over what happened next. Suffice it to say that by the time master Hatim had finished with slave George the latter felt that genie-mistress Johara’s ‘wish’ that he should ‘feel the sting of a thousand whips’ had come true! Never had a slave tunic been so difficult and painful to put back on again!

Suitably chastened slave George found himself blubbering with self pity and a sense, unbelievably for a slave, of grievance as he knelt at mistress Basmah’s feet and gently slipped her soft, black leather ballet-flats onto her bare, brown feet. It hadn’t been his fault that he didn’t know where mistress Basmah kept her shoes! Didn’t this haughty and arrogant young, married couple realise that he had only just been transported into their world?

Apparently not!

And so slave George realised that he would be spending the rest of the evening in the doghouse – viewed by his masters as a recalcitrant, disobedient slave when he wanted to be the opposite; he wanted so much to be a good personal footslave to the beautiful mistress Basmah!

Of course, he wouldn’t literally be spending the rest of the evening in the doghouse. There was no rest for the ‘wicked’, and he had to accompany his mistress to heel as she hit the town with her husband. He would have preferred to stay at home, at their home, and lick his wounds like a whipped cur if not mistress Basmah’s large collection of shoes and boots – but instead he would have to crawl after his mistress’s black ballet-flats on his increasingly painful knees along the harsh, unforgiving pavements of the streets outside, and with the additional discomfort of his now stinging back rubbing against the coarse material of his slave tunic.

He was quickly discovering that a personal footslave, just as much as a public footslave, has no say over his fate, and is at the constant beck and call of his superiors and betters.

In short, he was discovering that being a slave, in many ways, sucked!

Yet, for all that, he still found it a fascinating position to be in – crawling along the pavements behind his mistress’s heels as she walked, arm in arm with her husband, the short distance to their local bus-stop to catch the bus into the town centre. And then having to lie face down on the dirty, dusty floor of the bus whilst miss Basmah rested the dusty sole of her soft, leather, right ballet-flat on his upturned left cheek whilst her left ballet-flat-clad foot rested directly in front of his face. He was now reduced to being nothing more than miss Basmah’s personal footrest under her seat!

Even though it was quite dark down on the floor of the bus he could make out the tiny, individual folds and creases coming and going in the soft leather of her ballet shoe as she subconsciously twisted her foot-muscles inside the shoe. And he realised with a deep sense of humility that he too was little more than a part of her subconscious. She was barely aware of his presence as she rested her foot on the side of his face. She only had eyes for her husband Hatim. It was another painful lesson for a personal footslave to learn – that you were not the centre of attention; that you were largely ignored; that you were a piece of furniture rather than a human-being – albeit a whipped and sore piece of furniture!

Things didn’t get any better when the happy couple and their slave reached the cinema. Again, slave George was compelled to lie on his belly in the dark on the dusty floor of the cinema – his footslave-face acting as a footrest for miss Basmah’s ballet-flat-shod feet. Naturally, he could hear the film, but couldn’t see it, and so he would have liked to have focussed his attention instead on miss Basmah’s feet and footwear, but it was so dark he could barely make out her left foot even though it was resting just inches in front of his face. True, he could smell the soft, pungent leather of her ballet-flat shoe, but it was small consolation. He wanted to see it in all its glorious detail, to give it his full and undivided attention – to kiss it even; but as he was fast discovering a slave’s wishes, a real slave’s wishes, are of supreme unimportance.

Things were slightly more interesting in the restaurant afterwards. At least, as he knelt under the table at miss Basmah’s feet, he could see them again in the light – he could see the intriguing little wrinkles and folds on her bare footflesh inside her shoes as she again involuntarily flexed the muscles of her feet whilst she ate and chatted away happily above him to her beloved husband Hatim.

But now all slave George could think about was his own stomach; and how hungry he was; and how he could murder a glass of wine! He realised it was incredibly selfish and inappropriate for a slave to think like that – but he just couldn’t help himself! Perhaps he just wasn’t cut out to be a personal footslave, or any kind of slave, at all!

The couple got a taxi home, but slave George still found himself in the ‘boring’ role of being miss Basmah’s personal footrest. It wasn’t until they entered the house again that things started to liven up a bit:

‘Slave, my feet are hot and sweaty. Fetch a bowl of water and a towel; you’re going to wash my feet!’ snapped miss Basmah down at him as she took off her coat.

‘Yes, mistress Basmah. At once, mistress Basmah!’

If the whip had taught slave George anything, it had taught him not to hesitate when your mistress gives you an order. Even though he had no idea where to locate a basin of water and a towel in this unfamiliar house he would quickly find out. His back depended on it!

Luckily for George he saw the bowl just as soon as he crawled into the bathroom, and a towel wasn’t hard to locate either. He also had the good sense to ensure the water he put into the bowl was neither too warm nor too cold for bathing a superior mistress’s bare feet. It was only the act of crawling back to the living room with the bowl of water under one arm - without splashing the water all over the carpeted floor - that he found a bit difficult.

But he managed it, and soon was kneeling again in front of the leather sofa on which mistress Basmah had earlier been reclining but was now seated, patiently waiting for her inefficient and unsatisfactory personal footslave to remove her hot, sweaty ballet-flats and wash her bare, sweaty feet. Somewhat ominously she was holding a short riding crop in her hands – rather like the one his female customers had used on the shoeshine-stand when they had been dissatisfied with his performance as their public footslave.

At least I’ve got my slave tunic back on to protect me, thought slave George to himself, although even he realised that the riding crop would be extremely painful if brought down on the old sores of his already well-whipped back and shoulders.

‘Kiss my ballet-flats before you take them off my feet, slave,’ pronounced mistress Basmah.

At last! At last I am to be permitted to kiss my mistress’s sweaty shoes, thought slave George to himself – selfish as ever. He quickly lowered his lips and could smell the pungent aroma of soft leather mixed with dainty, feminine footsweat as his slave lips touched the toe of his mistress’s extended right shoe. She then quickly withdrew her right foot from under his nose in favour of her left, which, again, he dutifully kissed.

Kissing his mistress’s shoes turned out to be the highlight of his evening, for George was to prove to be a much better foot-kisser than he was a foot-washer. Mistress Basmah was not at all satisfied with his efforts at washing her feet. She accused him, at various junctures, of scratching her feet; of not ladling enough water over her pretty, brown feet; of neglecting her tired and chapped heels; of not extracting enough toe-jam from between her toes with his ‘arrogant’ slave tongue; of hurting her as he scraped out the debris from underneath her toenails with his slave teeth.

And with each perceived failing – she whipped him. She whipped him hard – with the riding crop, across his already tender shoulders underneath his flimsy, plain brown slave tunic. The constant criticism and beating was wearing slave George down. This wasn’t how he had imagined being mistress Basmah’s personal footslave would be! He was sore, tired and hungry.

The final straw came when she made him dispose of her now dirty bowl of foot water by drinking it. She actually made him drink her dead foot skin and sweaty toe-jam!

Luckily for George, he was to have his way out, for, once he had dried mistress Basmah’s feet with the towel, and ‘disposed’ of her dirty foot-water, she ordered him to fetch her slippers – her ‘silver slippers’. George was now determined to find his mistress’s shoe cupboard, for he needed those slippers every bit as much as she did.

They were, in the event, easy to find – at the bottom of her wardrobe in the master bedroom – along with all her other familiar shoes and boots: her yellow Wellingtons; her blue and white sneakers; her brown leather, pointy-toed, spike-heeled, ankle boots; and her shiny, black, strappy mary-janes, to name but a few.

He grabbed the exotic, sparkly-silver slippers and promptly disobeyed his mistress, for he did not crawl back with them to the living room and place them on her freshly-washed feet, as he had been ordered to do. Instead, he licked the silver slippers, and summoned genie-mistress Johara.

Again there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke, and goddess-mistress genie Johara was once more towering over him:

‘Ha! Ha!’ she laughed, ‘the foolish mortal has summoned me so soon again! Is your life as mistress Basmah’s personal footslave not to your liking, kind sir!’ she mocked, a look of withering contempt in her pretty, brown, Arabian eyes above her pretty, veiled, Arabian face.

Slave George decided to swallow his pride and to admit defeat. Goddess-mistress genie Johara had been right, and he had been wrong. Fantasy was better than reality. He wanted his old life back as a shoeshine man in the real world. At least he wouldn’t go hungry, and be whipped and spat at! He would be in a position of servitude, as it were, but without all the horrors of true slavery!

‘Oh pray, goddess-mistress genie Johara, if it pleases you, supremely wise and all-knowing goddess-mistress genie Johara, this pitiful mortal has made a foolish mistake, and now wishes for nothing more than to return to his old life as a humble shoeshine man. This pathetic male is not fit to be a slave of superior women!’

‘Ha! Ha! You have learnt a valuable lesson, oh pathetic mortal!’ exclaimed genie-mistress Johara. ‘Fantasy is often best left as fantasy, and reality as reality. Did Johara not caution you to be careful what you wish for?’

Slave George lowered his head to goddess-mistress genie’s silver-slippered feet and kissed them. In so doing he acknowledged the wisdom of her words, the superiority of women over men, and his unworthiness to be their slave in reality.

‘Ha! Ha! Very well, submissive and contrite mortal. As you wish so shall it be! This is your third and final wish, pathetic man!’ and with that superior genie-mistress Johara dismissed slave George with a derisory wave of her hand, there was another flash of light and puff of smoke, and George came to his senses on the cold tiles of his kitchen floor – an empty bottle of wine lying by his side.

It took him a while to get his bearings. Where was he? What had happened? He saw the empty bottle of wine, and he saw the silvery-sparkly slippers lying beside it on the floor.

He must have passed out! His head was throbbing! Too much alcohol again!

It must all have been a dream – everything that he thought had just happened to him! And yet it had all seemed so vivid and so real – genie-mistress Johara; the arrogant, young, pin-stripe suited businesswoman; the two Australian backpacker-girls; the trip to the cinema; the painful beatings from master Hatim and mistress Basmah!

He checked his clothes. They were normal – no slave tunic in sight; he felt his back and shoulders under his shirt – no whip marks; he picked up the silvery-sparkly slippers and licked them – nothing happened.

I need another drink thought George!

---------------------------------------------------------------


Two days later, on Friday morning, George was back at his shoeshine stand in the central railway station. He had just polished the knee-length, black leather, block-heeled, zip-up boots of a charmingly polite young office-girl who had left him a generous tip, when he saw the exotic miss Basmah approaching him with a big, friendly smile on her pretty Arabian face as usual.

‘Hi, George,’ she chirped as she held out her arm to facilitate him in gallantly assisting her once again up into the comfortable, leather-backed, high chair of the ornate shoeshine stand. ‘How are you today?’

‘Fine, thank you miss,’ responded George, although if truth be told he wasn’t fine. He was still nervous and confused, and wanted to ask miss Basmah something.

She rested her pretty feet on the two metal footrests in front of his face, although this time she was wearing blue, denim jeans and pink and white sneakers with cute, matching, low-cut, pink and white sneaker socks with a thin, pink stripe along each of the elasticated tops:

‘Could you just try sprucing these sneakers up a bit please, George? I know you hate trying to polish sneakers, but if you could even just get some of the dirt off the pink areas that would be great!’

It was such a polite request from a beautiful young woman that George could hardly refuse!

‘I’ll certainly try my best, miss!’ he responded politely, as he dipped a clean cloth in some water ready to wipe as much dust and mud as possible off the pink areas of miss Basmah’s pink and white sneakers.

He couldn’t help noticing also the familiar crescent-shaped tattoo on miss Basmah’s left ankle above the elasticated top of her short, pink and white sneaker-sock. Such a charming little tattoo!

‘Oh, and did you manage to clean up those other shoes I left you, George?’ she enquired from her seated position above him.

‘Yes, miss, I have them here ready for you,’ replied George indicating the carrier bag by the side of the shoeshine stand with a nod of his head.

‘Great! Thanks!’ replied miss Basmah, happy, as ever, with George’s service.

George hesitated. He wanted to ask miss Basmah something, but his innate submissiveness made it difficult for him to initiate a conversation with an attractive and superior young woman. George might have been a bad slave, but he was still a polite and respectful submissive male:

‘Erm… miss Basmah…erm…do you mind if I ask you a question?’ he stuttered.

‘Sure George, go ahead – spit it out,’ responded miss Basmah, apparently amused by his nervousness and diffidence. Perhaps, even, secretly quite enjoying his fear and submissive demeanour towards her?

‘Erm…those silvery slippers you left for me to clean…can I ask where you got them?’

Miss Basmah had to pause for a moment:

‘Um...I think I brought them over with me when I moved here from Egypt. I think I picked them up in a bazaar, or something. Why, did they smell a bit or were they difficult to clean?...Ha! Ha! Don’t worry about it, George – I don’t expect you to work miracles!’

George laughed politely:

‘No, no, miss, it’s not that …it’s just that ….oh, it’s nothing really! It doesn’t matter, miss!’

‘Come on, George, don’t leave me in suspense! What is it you want to say about my slippers? Don’t you like them?’

‘Oh yes, miss, I like them very much…it’s just that, well, I hope you won’t be offended, but I had a really strange dream about them!’

Miss Basmah laughed:

‘Ha! Ha! Oh really, George? Well, I’m not offended at all! In fact, I’m rather flattered that you have dreams about my manky old slippers! Would you like to tell me about this dream, then?'

George felt himself turning pink with embarrassment – pink to match the now gleaming pink stripes on miss Basmah’s pink and white sneakers. He couldn’t possibly relate to miss Basmah the contents of his bizarre, erotic dream – about genie-mistress Johara; about wishing to be her, miss Basmah’s, personal footslave; about her husband Hatim whipping him. It would all be just too embarrassing!

‘Oh no, miss…it was nothing really! It was just a dream!’

Miss Basmah was still laughing as she inspected her sneakers and held out her hand for George to assist her down from the shoeshine stand:

‘Ha! Ha! Well, you’ll have to pluck up the courage to tell me all about it sometime, George, but I must admit I am in a bit of a hurry right now. Perhaps you can recount your dream about my slippers some other time?’

‘Yes, miss…perhaps I will,’ responded George, relieved that he was, temporarily at least, off the hook.

Miss Basmah picked up the carrier bag containing her shoes, including the silvery-sparkly slippers, gave George her money and turned to walk off:

‘Bye, George. Keep the change! See you next time!’ she chirped happily.

‘Good bye, miss! Thank you!’ answered George politely.

After just a few steps, however, miss Basmah suddenly stopped, turned around, and shouted back to him:

‘Oh, just one more thing, George!’

‘Yes, miss?’

‘Be careful what you wish for!’

She then winked at him, and walked off, swinging her carrier bag by her side.

George was, not for the first time, stunned! His heart skipped a beat and his brow furrowed.

Which pretty, brown ankle had that crescent-shaped tattoo been on? Her right ankle or her left ankle?


The End